agreed! and for anyone else that might not be aware of it, there's a section in post #1 that covers various EMI with the X-Fi.

But, the only reason I had originally figured they wanted to move towards PCIE was because of how much of a BUS hog the X-Fi is. There are far too many generic, OEM and low to mid range motherboards on the market that don't negotiate the PCI BUS well and it leads to a lot of audio clipping. Someone going out and buying a mid-range eMachines or Dell and then trying to upgrade to a XGFP might not be happy with how the card sounds in-game.

I agree, too, that PCI must continue, and I'm sure within the next couple of years we might actually see another advancement in the PCI architecture as it is. There's no way Creative would be dumb enough to develop an AGP card, considering that AGP is very slowly being phased out . . . but if their next gen audio processors are more powerful than the X-Fi, they'll have to do something . . .

potentially, it doesn't look that hard to do. My only reservation, I don't know if those circuits feed any other component on the card.

If you're trying to keep them from lighting up, remove the two screws that hold the LED cover in place, and on the inside of it, you can put a small piece of electrical tape or duct tape to cover where the Fatal1ty logo shows through. It'll block the LEDs from illuminating it.

If you have the guts to take the risk, though, the two LEDs should unsolder from the PCB without much of a problem - but that's your call, you could seriously damage the card doing so . . .

potentially, it doesn't look that hard to do. My only reservation, I don't know if those circuits feed any other component on the card.

If you're trying to keep them from lighting up, remove the two screws that hold the LED cover in place, and on the inside of it, you can put a small piece of electrical tape or duct tape to cover where the Fatal1ty logo shows through. It'll block the LEDs from illuminating it.

If you have the guts to take the risk, though, the two LEDs should unsolder from the PCB without much of a problem - but that's your call, you could seriously damage the card doing so . . .

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yeah thank you, i wasnt sure if somehow the the circuits powering the LED were intertwined with other circuits that could be useful in other areas of the card. i actually wanted to switch out the LED to a different color and used "less" power" if thats even the case.

I think it would be safe to remove the leds,why would the circuit neet to be for anything else.

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I would tend to agree - but you can never be sure sometimes, y'know?

i actually wanted to switch out the LED to a different color and used "less" power" if thats even the case

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that's defi doable. Again, they'll have to be removed with a soldering gun and installed the same way, but it's not too hard if your careful.

I'm not sure on the voltage spec for the LEDs, though. I couldn't imagine that they'd be 12v, and I eve doubt 5v. More than likely they're either 3.3v or 1.2v LED - if they're in series with each other, probably 1.2. Anyhow, you can either take a voltage reading at the LED pins themself - or just go ahead and try replacing them with a different unit.

If you do notice any markings on them, try googling them and see if you can run across some specs for them.

I have had this card for 3 weeks now and I can't seem to get the card to work all the time. The problem is every few hours or more of gaming the card goes to a high pitch constant sound that can only be stopped by rebooting. If I change to a different mode in the console it will stop the screech however the card will not work (no sound or Mic) until a reboot. I have requested a refund from newegg however I still have a few more day to solve this before I have to send it back and throw away $27 dollars and I love the sound! This is a problem that other people have since it is on creative forum with no one having a clue how to resolve this.

Yes I am running XP and I will check on the other things tonight. I have not tried to run just one PGU however many others have posted that even 1 gpu and sli board will cause this problem. Out of curiosity did you happen to look at that thread I posted on my previous message I know that you are very knowledgeable about this and may find it interesting reading.

The only reason I asked if you still had the issue with only one GPU installed, is that would tell me it's definitely a problem with the chipset not negotiating the BUS correctly, and allowing the two GPUs to have more control than they should.

Even one GPU on an nVidia chipset is known to cause this problem, too . . .

Increasing the PCI latency of the BUS might help the audio card to retain control of the BUS long enough it can carry out it's business, but it won't always work, either.

I just get the feeling this might be out of my ability to help solve as I'm fairly certain it's a conflict problem on the hardware level. I'll still try to help you pinpoint exactly where or what is causing the problem, though.

Check with nVidia to see if there are any chipset/INF updates (ASUS should have the newest updates available on their site). But, you might have to continue to pester ASUS, nVidia and Creative over this issue.

Out of curiosity did you happen to look at that thread I posted on my previous message I know that you are very knowledgeable about this and may find it interesting reading.

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I only kind of glanced over it, I haven't had the time yet to read through most of the thread. I do intend to, though.

Thank you for your time I had to make a decision today either keep the card and trouble shoot without hope or send it back to Newegg for a full refund (man I love Newegg). I decided to pickup a Barracuda AC-1 gaming audio card since it has been reported that there are no bugs for my chipset. Thanks for your time and help on this matter. BTW does it bother you that Creative has known about this forever and has not addressed it as of yet.

I did try what you suggested and still got the screech which is why I sent card back this morning.

Thanks for your time and help on this matter. BTW does it bother you that Creative has known about this forever and has not addressed it as of yet.

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hey, it's no problem, man. You gotta do what you gotta do.

I can't really say that it bothers me, but I think it's rather pittiful on Creative's part - my own opinion, I don't think they spent enough time product testing the X-Fis before going to market with them. Also, the numerous problems with only nVidia chipsets has a bit to do with nVidia's architecture - they've designed chipsets in the past that allow the graphics card(s) to have almost full reign of the BUS. It allows for much better frame rates and performance, which is what they're after. I don't really like it, but it's how they do things. Creative just didn't really take the time to research and address the issue.

Hi imperialreign I need some help, something interesting happened to me today, I have a year and half old X-Fi extreme music card, from the beginning was working kind of ok some pop and clicks but hell I get used to it! but then one day after I booted up the machine started doing some kind of a high pitched noise, the only way to get rid of it was booting again! and it became an every day practice for months just around July 2007 I installed again my windows Xp due to a new harddrive installation and I found from TECHPOWERUP website a BETA Driver downloaded and was working flawlessly until TODAY

well the driver I had timed out today was very difficult for me to put my machine back to work after I tried using the latest 2006 driver from sound blaster website my machine crashed and was into an infinite loop until I cleaned the drivers leftover in SAFEMODE and physically pulled out the card from the PC

for now I'm using the stinking on board audio very sad that SB doesn't release any newer driver the the 2006 and solve a lot of the existing problems!

how we can use that beta driver unlocking the due date? there any solutions??
Thanks!

well, if the beta driver timed out, there isn't much you can do about that, honestly. Sometimes, manufacturers will 'time' their beta drivers during their testing period.

Just to make sure, have you checked for any updates to your motherboard BIOS and motherboard's chipsets?

To be honest, it sounds more like a hardware problem with the card - the drivers for it have nothing to do with any sound the device might put out when the system in initially booted up . . . the driver doesn't come into play until WIN starts to boot. First, though, check you speaker connections on the back of the card. A loose plug, or one that is falling out can pickup feedback when the system boots and the card is powered up.

If your speaker connections are alright, and if possible, you might want to try installing the X-Fi into a different PCI slot. Turn off the computer, move the audio card to a different slot, and boot up. If you don't have the issue that you had before, you should be alright, but that would indicate that there might be a problem with the motherboard. If everything seems alright with the card in a different slot, turn the computer back off, remove the audio card and reboot, then, remove all the drivers from WIN using the driver setup utility in the C:\Program Files\Creative\Sound Blaster X-FI\Program directory. Then run a registry cleaner, if you have one, and remove all the old Creative driver references. Turn the computer off, re-install the X-Fi into the good slot, boot up and install the driver from the installation CD.

imperialreign the X-Fi problem is a combination of hardware and software problem, it is well known that X-Fi cards have incompatibility issues with NFORCE chipsets nothing new there but the questions is that the beta driver I had was working ok much better than the one I used before from the creative website, now because expired we don't have a replacement until today I found this link I will try that later I'm lazy to open the machine again

yeah, the first chipset that was recognized as actually having a problem was the NF4s. I would've recommended the beta driver sooner, I guess I just got confused as to what you were explaining. No problem.

If in the future you need to check on what the most current drivers are, both beta and alpha, check post #1 in this thread - I update the listed driver numbers as soon as I notice that there has been a newer release. Plus, there are links to where the most current drivers can be obtained.

WOW I wonder if this beta would have helped me with my problem? I guess I will never know until I find a cheap X-FI somewhere just to satisfy my curiosity.

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Maybe - but I typically don't recommend installing beta drivers for what is typically a hardware conflict, simply because beta drivers aren't supported and could cause more problems than they're worth . . .

it would really help, though, if Creative would mention what the beta drivers are supposed to address and for what cards and OSes they're released for, instead of just posting them with no desccription about them.

I'm very surprised that Creative Labs is still in business with such a lousy customer service and support we need another company to produce something and put some pressure on them, just like between Nvidia and ATI

another company to produce something and put some pressure on them, just like between Nvidia and ATI.

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Creative already has pressure, from the el-cheapo AC'97 / HDA compliant audio-codec manufacturers, like those of Realtek, Analog Devices, C-Media, etc. People either choose a Creative card or stick to the audio their motherboards came with, that's the competition Creative faces with. Now since these audio-codec mfgs don't have a customer support of their own since the motherboard manufacturers like Intel, Asus, MSI, etc manage technical support of the audio-codec as well, you very well know the standards of tech-support from Intel or Asus.

In another way, there's no pressure on Creative because they're the only manufacturers of hardware-accelerated audio. We had Nvidia SoundStorm about five years ago, which was a little more capable than X-Fi, with the function of real-time Dolby-Digital encoding, something even the powerful X-Fi can't handle. But Nvidia was stupid-enough to stop it's production. The day they modify the SoundStorm to function on discrete PCI / PCIe add-on cards, it's good-bye Creative.

In another way, there's no pressure on Creative because they're the only manufacturers of hardware-accelerated audio.

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Vista would've leveled the playing field in this area - but Creative has found a work-around with the Alchemy drivers. But, anytime that there is a strong competitor to Creative that comes along, either the go out of business or just stop produncing any audio hardware. The SoundStorm is a good example - remember the Ensoniq PCI? First audio card to use a multichannel design and DirectSound3D . . . until Creative bought them out.

Nyaah. The ALchemy thing didn't really improve things very much. Sure you get multi-channel audio from the games that were originally coded for the DirectSound 3D and the EAX extensions, but all you get is the multi-channel positional audio and not the brilliant reverb and environment-specific effects that the CA 20K1 and EAX 5.0 HD were originally made for....what a waste!

ALchemy is basically a compatibility layer between the application's DirectSound commands and the operating-system's OpenAL api. Windows Vista lacks DirectSound. So all those pre-Vista games that had those amazing multi-channel audio effects that relied on DirectSound, now send their commands to the OS HAL, and ALchemy forms a pre-layer to the HAL and captures these commands, translates them into OpenAL commands and sends it to the ICD (Installable client driver). Stacks from here now go to the OS kernel and finally to the hardware. ALchemy can't translate EAX 5 commands and hence, it's goodbye EAX for us. So this completely defeats the purpose of having a 10000+ MIPS audio processor.

Today is a Red-letter day. I bought and installed an Auzen X-Fi Prelude. Wow! what a sound !!! I was listening to a DTS encoded movie and the sound of an aircraft flying above actually made me look up with reflex. Only a second later I realised it came from the speakers.

Okay, so with the entry of this card my old one, an Xtreme Gamer is now my lab-mouse. I'm buying solid-state capacitors to replace all the electrolytic ones on the card. Also to follow, is the heatsink mod. Any suggestions on which brands and makes of capacitors I should be using, would be appreciated.

Oh yeah...my first mod for the Xtreme Gamer: Gold electro-plating of the expansion bracket.